R-Pi Startup Problem

Howdy;

I recently got an R-Pi, and after a bit of a wait, I finally
got the stuff to make it work. Or so I thought.

Ok, so I plug in the micro USB Power plug, the red power light
comes on, and the ACT light blinks randomly, sort of like the
light on a hard drive, and after a bit, quits, leaving just
the power light on.

The NTSC TV I have for a moniter, displays nothing. It has
3 inputs. One is a std screw in with a socket for a stiff
wire, (the std antenna line). The other two are RCA types,
one for video, one for audio. All three work fine with my
DVD/VCR machine.

I have the std three line RCA cables, and one with the antenna
plug on one end, and an RCA plug on the other. Neither cable
sets seem to be the problem.

I got the Pi from Amazon, and the NOOBS card from Newark.
I've followed the advice of one website, and tried holding
the, "4", key down during startup, and then again later
holding the, "Shift 4", keys down, but neither got a working
display going.

I'm beginning to think I've got a faulty Pi, but have no
idea of how to check for sure.

Anyone know whats going on here?

Bill

Do you (or a friend!) have a monitor with HDMI or DVI input that you can try first before deciding it's a faulty Pi?

I've also had Pi with the normal distro that refused to boot until one of the config files on the SD card was edited, not sure if this is the same for NOOBS card.

http://elinux.org/RPiconfig has details of how the config file is used to simulate normal "BIOS" settings.

TenTenths Wrote:

>Do you (or a friend!) have a monitor with HDMI or DVI >input that you can try first before deciding it's a faulty >Pi?

Unfortunately, no.

>I've also had Pi with the normal distro that refused to >boot until one of the config files on the SD card was >edited, not sure if this is the same for NOOBS card.

I don't think it's supposed to be, at least it isn't
mentioned in what I've read about it so far.

>http://elinux.org/RPiconfig has details of how the config >file is used to simulate normal "BIOS" settings.

Thanks, that gave me an idea I should have thought of
allready. I put the sd card in my card reader, and ran
a diff on /media/usb0/config.txt and
/media/usb0/config.txt.ntsc_northamerica, and the two
files are identical, indicating that the Pi detected no
HDMI, and defaulted to NTSC.

So, does that mean that the NTSC output is at fault, or
what?

Bill